Author: Campbell, Debbie M

Morwell Park P S

School Community Newsletter

76-82 Vary St, MORWELL. 3840
Ph. 5134 1793,
email - morwell.park.ps@education.vic.gov.au
www.morwellparkps.vic.edu.au

5th November, 2021

Morwell Park Primary School Official

IMPORTANT DATES
Friday, 19th November	SCHOOL PHOTOS.
Monday, 22nd November	Curriculum Day. No children at school.
Friday, 3rd December	Gr 3 Werribee Zoo excursion.
Principals Report

COVID Update
What a week it’s been between newsletters. COVID has certainly hit our community and we have had active cases in each of our year levels unfortunately creating Primary Close Contacts (PCC) throughout our school other than our grade 6 group. This has been exacerbated by the open design of modern school architecture whereby we have large open spaced building design meaning that although we are able to separate year levels we are not able to separate those teachers and students within the year level. As Murphy’s Law would have it, our first six students who were COVID positive were from six different year levels thereby creating a large number of PCC.
I have been informed that the day 13 COVID test is taken from the most recent COVID exposure. Some of our year levels were exposed to a contagious student on Tuesday and then later in the week another contagious student on the Friday. The Friday then becomes the most recent exposure, therefore the following Thursday would become day 13. Relevant health authorities will be supporting a testing centre here at school for next Thursday November 11 which is the day 13 for the vast majority of our PCC students. Details of times and procedures will be made early next week.
Seesaw
For the past three years we have been using Seesaw as our main communications platform with our community. Seesaw enables our school to upload Remote Learning tasks, provide work samples, upload newsletters, receive information from parents and caregivers, communicate attendance and in general it’s a platform to give and receive information. Now more than ever it is important to utilise.
In these unprecedented times I can be in consultation with department hierarchy well into an evening. Decisions to go into remote learning or indeed close the school are made by senior Department of Education officials and sometimes following evening meetings. Seesaw is our main means of communicating such decisions. Similarly in determining PCC. Please regularly check Seesaw and if you aren’t yet using Seesaw – it’s time to get onboard. We are here to help you so please let us know if you need that assistance.
School Photos
School photos take 6 – Friday November 19
Curriculum Day
We have scheduled a curriculum day for Monday November 22. This day will be utilised to revise essential curriculum and assessment.
Chris Joustra, Principal.